Sunet är också:

Welcome to the Fiber Fever Blog!

av Jörgen Städje den 3 Maj 2016

I am very grateful that the SUNET organisation chose me as their main author, to describe the development of the new SUNET C. Dear reader: I promise I will do my very best to convey all the technicalities to you.

I shall remain with Thee from this moment and until the end of 2016, when the network will be up and running.

It is not very common to get a chance to follow the development of a nationwide network, from the first napkin sketch, until the final fibre optic plug is plugged in and the cake is hauled from the depths of the refrigerator, while all the time having access to the knowledge of the designers themselves.

The OptoSunet we all know so well is going to its grave, hopefully with its flags flying. Its replacement will make all the affiliates even happier by offering higher bandwidth, triple redundancy and more or less 100 percent uptime. The SUNET organisation recently acquired a new nationwide fibre structure to serve all universities, colleges as well as some state museums and cultural organisations.

The reason for the change is that the rental period of the old fibres is at an end, and may not be renewed due to the Law on Public Procurement. Also, the capacity had to be increased. On top of this, the optical equipment is about 15 years old, and although there are still spare parts and service agreements to be had, there is no more equipment available for extending the capacity. The new network is being deployed now and will be up and running by the end of 2016.

Image: Puggen, CC BY-SA 3

The existing OptoSunet benefits from standard redundancy, utilising a “red” and a “green” network. This has not been sufficient to maintain one hundred percent uptime, although 99,96% has been readily achieved. Fibre links are cut all the time, but this mostly results in the “Reduced redundancy” description in the trouble ticket.

The new network will mainly hang from power line pylons in the Swedish 400 kilovolt backbone. An advantage of the Swedish backbone is that it doesn’t fall over in a storm. At least, it hasn’t happened yet.

Your writer-in-tech Jörgen Städje

Further Reading

I am not the one to want to distract the readers from the interesting subject at hand. Anyway, could I have the pleasure of interesting you in some other reading, some external articles of mine? They reflect my knowledge in the field, and I hope they will infuse you with some confidence in my upcoming work. Unfortunately they are only in Swedish, so you will have to utilise Google Translate. For better or for worse.